


Don't Be Kind To Me. Honey, Don't Feed Me (I Will Come Back)

by The_lazy_eye



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Gardener Jamie, Getting Together, Ghost Dani, Happy Ending, Jamie Gets To Bly After Everything Happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27581669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_lazy_eye/pseuds/The_lazy_eye
Summary: Jamie knows better than to trust another person, especially a stranger. Knows the sting of open palms on her skin. Knows fingers sunk deep into her heart only to twist and squeeze until she’s at the mercy of another. She knows.Knows pain. Knows grief. Knowsbetter.And yet.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 17
Kudos: 109





	Don't Be Kind To Me. Honey, Don't Feed Me (I Will Come Back)

**Author's Note:**

> Bly Manor, retold.

It happened years ago, under the cover of a moonlit sky. So long that it feels like centuries, so short that it feels like hours. A gravity well that sucked her so deep into the ground, sometimes she can’t feel anything other than the weights pinning her arms into the mud. How she ended up down there, she’ll never understand. Maybe she doesn’t remember. _Can’t_ remember. It doesn’t matter, though. The _how_ or _why_ of it all has twisted and faded into butchered memories of the faceless. Whatever happened is done with. All that’s left is the now.

The sleeping. The waking. The walking.

An infinite cycle that feels so automatic she is hardly herself. Hasn’t been herself in hours, years, centuries.

So much time, but so little all the same.

She walks. She _wanders_.

_________________________

It isn’t the people that Jamie works for. Fuck the people. If she had it her way, she would never cross paths with another living, breathing human being ever again. She’s content to spend her days sequestered away among the ivy greens climbing high onto the ceiling above her. She’s happy to have herself and her work. Her employer is nothing but a means to her end goal.

It’s not him she works for. It’s the _plants_.

Jamie spends so much of her time with her wrists beneath the ground that she doesn’t notice new faces coming and going. It’s not worth it. Never is. The only reason she let the cook even know her name is because he’s been here long before she ever arrived. He wore her down, that fucker. Brought her meals in the middle of the day and whistled peaceful tunes into the empty kitchen. He spoke to her until she started answering just to shut him up. Owen is more than a temporary fixture of Bly, she realizes. He remains even as others cycle in and out. And, well, Jamie isn’t planning on going anywhere. She might as well have a co-conspirator.

There’s dirt underneath her nails and roots twisted along the backs of her hands. Gently, she works. Careful as to not injure the plant that’s at her mercy. With one wrong move, she could end this forever. She could uproot the plant in its entirety, or sever its base from the ground. She could make sure this plant never breathes again. One jerk of her wrist, a single snip of her clippers.

She wouldn’t, though. She couldn’t. They trust her, in a weird sort of way, and she trusts them. Not until they’re ready to be picked.

The wilting leaves have been concerning her for days, the way they brown at the edges and droop a little lower than they should. Jamie knows it can be saved, though. She knows if she works to figure out the problem, she can help this little guy grow until its heart’s content. She can free it from whatever plagues it in the night.

She pours all of her effort into her plants. Every last drop of herself goes into this dirt, these pots, those leaves. She works until her fingers ache, and then she keeps going. It’s always worth it when she can step back and see the progress she’s made.

Plants are easy. She finds the problem, addresses it, and watches as they spring to life before her eyes.

People are not. People are nothing but selfish tricks and easy nightmares. Even when she tries her hardest, they do nothing but let her down. In the end, it’s always been just this.

Jamie and her flowerbed hopelessness.

The greenhouse becomes her sanctuary on the grounds. It’s secluded enough that when others come to Bly, she is insulated among foliage and flowers. Scattered across the grounds, she has hedges and gardens to keep her busy. And deep in the forest, hidden behind mossy trunks and unearthed roots, is Jamie’s own personal haven. The place where she works the hardest and finds her fulfillment in pale-white pedals.

More often than not, though, she finds herself in the greenhouse. Gardens and hedges only need so much attention, but in here there’s always more to be done. More to be planted, healed, and potted. A constant flux of new and old. Wilted and worn down. Still savable, though. Still worth it.

It’s what she’s working on that first night. Owen had brought her a new plant, one he’d saved from the shed. Ceramic pot shattered and roots spilling out of the not-enough soil. Green leaves tinted brown and the creature just looking overall sad. Not dead yet, though. He’d brought it to her as the sun began to set and she found herself working through the evening.

It isn’t a noise that startles Jamie out of her work, but a movement. Subtle and smooth out of the corner of her eye. She’s so wrapped up in her work that she doesn’t see anything until it moves entirely into the greenhouse, lingering near the door but still close enough to scare the living crap out of her.

She startles, knocking over a pot. The shattering of the ceramic isn’t enough to shake her and she stands frozen. A deer caught in the headlights of a car careening toward her. Any second now, she’ll feel the impact of it.

It takes two seconds for her body to catch up with the fear that rises into the back of her throat, and she grabs a piece of broken pot from the ground. It isn’t sharp the way glass is, but it’ll do the job if she needs it to. It’ll be enough.

The stranger in the doorway doesn’t move, though. She doesn’t make any indication that she is here to harm Jamie. In fact, it doesn’t look like she meant to be noticed at all. Her eyes sit wide on her face and her lips part ever so slightly, as if _Jamie_ is the one who walked in on _her_.

She almost looks… innocent. The realization makes the tension drain out of Jamie’s shoulders, and she drops her arms to her side. Still, though, Jamie doesn’t speak. Doesn’t know what she would even say. A thousand questions sit on the back of her tongue but none of them ever make it out.

_Who are you? What are you doing here? What in the ever-loving fuck is going on?_

Instead, the only noise in the room is the wind as it whistles outside.

She knows better than to trust another person, especially a stranger. Knows the sting of open palms on her skin. Knows fingers sunk deep into her heart only to twist and squeeze until she’s at the mercy of another. She knows.

Knows pain. Knows grief. Knows _better_.

And yet, the heterochromatic eyes in front of her draw her in. They watch her every movement and she watches theirs. Beautiful blonde hair that spills wet over two strong shoulders. The stranger standing in front of her seems clouded over and distant, but beautiful all the same. Alluring in her mystery.

Dangerous for the same reason.

Jamie watches and is watched. How long they stand there, she can’t say. No one speaks, no one moves. And in their stillness, Jamie feels spun around in wide, dizzying circles until she’s weak on her feet.

The same way she entered, the stranger leaves. Turns on her toes and practically floats out of the greenhouse. No hello, no goodbye.

Jamie watches until there’s nothing left to watch, and then she watches more.

The next time it happens, it’s in the woods. Jamie is twisting vines through the metal of a trellis when she sees her. She is nothing but a glow in the darkness, pale skin practically absorbing the glow from the moon above. Jamie, having known these woods for the better part of a year now, has never seen another soul out here. Never.

Until now.

Until she sees the lady from the greenhouse, hair still wet and eyes still wide.

She doesn’t seem to notice Jamie at first, too busy staring off toward the lake that rests near the chapel. She seems absorbed in thought, peaceful and lost among the wildflowers and tree trunks. Jamie wonders if she’s come here before, remembers how effortlessly she entered and then left the greenhouse. As if she _knows_ the property.

She’s been here before.

“Oi,” Jamie shouts, loud enough to be heard but not enough to startle someone. The lady startles anyway, shaken from her trance as she spins to face Jamie. She is exactly how Jamie remembers her, down to the pink of her sweater. “What are you doing out here? This is private property, you know.”

She waits for the lady to answer. She doesn’t.

She doesn’t look hurt or lost, but Jamie feels something pull at her heart. Something that tells her this isn’t quite right. Something isn’t quite _wrong_ , either, but Jamie feels unease settle into her stomach. For herself or for the lady, she isn’t sure.

“Are you okay?”

Again, no answer. No indication the person in front of her is even _alive_.

“Can I help you with something?” Jamie asks, unsure of why she’s even asking it. She should leave. If she knew what was good for her, she’d turn around and run. Get back to the house as fast as she can so she can find safety in the shotgun tucked behind the shelves. Whoever this is, standing in front of her, she could be dangerous. She could have a weapon on her, she could be stronger than she looks. She could hold Jamie down and take her very life.

Jamie should run. She should leave now, while she still can.

But she doesn’t. She simply watches until the lady blinks twice, turns, and walks. 

When she disappears behind a tree, she disappears altogether. Jamie surveys the surrounding area, but she’s _gone._ Vanished into thin air.

It should have been the end of it. People don’t just dematerialize into thin air. They leave traces behind, fingerprints or tracks in the mud. 

She sees her again. The lady. Or, least, she thinks she does. Snatches of her appear in the hallways, wet footprints left in her wake as her shadow slips through the door. Jamie follows, but never catches her. 

She sees her, again, at the edge of the lake. Standing and staring at nothing at all. And when Jamie goes out, tries to corner her and ask her what the fuck does she think she’s doing, there isn’t even so much as a trail to follow. She seems to materialize so quickly, and dissipate even quicker, that Jamie doubts she’s real at all.

Still, she sees her.

It happens slowly at first, Infrequent, until it builds to a weekly occurrence. She is always the same: wearing a water stained sweater, her hair hair soaking wet. She must be cold out there, even on the warmest nights.

Jamie never gets as close as she got that first day. It drives her nuts, leaves her thinking she’s gone mad and started seeing things. It was only a matter of time until her head started to go funny, what with only plants to keep her company.

Plants and this new hallucination of hers.

It gets to the point where she all but accepts it. When she sees the lady, she stops chasing her. She simply notices and keeps going with her day. A silhouette in the woods, a shadow in the doorway, an outline in the drive. It becomes a normal part of Jamie’s life.

It’s almost comforting. She never knows where she’ll see her little ghost next, but when she does she feels little fear. No, she isn’t afraid of this. If the lady were here to hurt her, she would have done so by now. Instead, she finds something close to relief.

When she goes too long without seeing her, she begins to feel anxious. Begins to look for her around corners and in the night. Normally, her lady comes to her. She positions herself right outside of Jamie’s line of sight, purposeful to be caught yet not so obvious as to make herself immediately known. Jamie knows it’s intentional, so when she goes too long between sightings, she can’t help but worry.

She always comes back, though. Always positions herself _just_ far enough away that Jamie couldn’t get to her if she tried.

The cook finds her staring out the window more than once. Asks her about her searching gaze.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he jokes.

Jamie answers with a smirk, tells him she has.

Owen tells her, is his own way, to be careful.

He tells her to watch herself. Be wary of stray ghosts and ghouls and monsters she finds. Don’t be kind to them unless she’s willing to accept the responsibility of letting them in.

His words send a shiver down the back of her spine. Makes gooseflesh rise on her arms and neck. The way he says it makes her feel as if _he knows_. As if he’s seen her before and kept it to himself.

It’s as if he knows something she does not know, and is trying to warn her about it now.

Still, Jamie searches. She can’t help herself.

Never before has she felt so powerless against something. It’s as though her lady has sunk herself into the spaces between Jamie’s ribs and taken hold.

She wants to know more about this apparition. Wants to know what she is and where she came from. Why is Jamie seeing her? And why now? Is she real or is she a figment of Jamie’s imagination?

Her lady in the greenhouse. Her lady in the woods. Her lady at the lake.

She must be real, Jamie decides, when she notices Owen watching her a little more closely. After he catches Jamie searching in the garden, he begins sharing his own stories about life; about how love can drive someone to the edge of hysteria. Jamie knows better than to laugh when she sees the lines that form at the edges of his eyes, but this is not about love. Nor is it the kind of grief Owen speaks of. Jamie does not have anyone to grieve. Nor does she love anyone, let alone someone who she has never properly met. She’s simply fascinated, simply drawn into the mystery of it all.

She should know better than to let herself get sucked into something – someone – she doesn’t know.

She knows better, and yet…

Owen’s words ring out in her ears.

_Don’t be kind to it, Jamie. Don’t feed it. Or else, it’ll keep coming back._

Underneath her skin and bones, somewhere tangled the deepest part of her chest, she knows that that’s exactly what she wants.

She wants those mismatched eyes, always wide and wondering, staring back at her. She wants to hold those pale hands, feel for herself if they’re as soft as they look. She wants, more than anything, to hear her voice. To know, truly, what she sounds like. Is her voice as soft and gentle as the wind, or is it harsh and graveled like a summer storm? What would it sound like if she said her name?

It’s strange for her to want to know someone so bad. People are nothing but daggers in the end, poised and ready to strike. Jamie _knows_ this, _knows_ the consequences of wanting.

Regardless of what she does and doesn’t know, she _wants._

She works. Ghosts or no ghosts, there are things to be tended to. Flowers to grow and cut, weeds to pull and trim. Jamie’s life keeps pushing forward even when it feels like everything else is standing still. She finds solace in it, really. Comfort in the way that the green continues to grow even when she feels stunted. _Exhaustive effort_ , she thinks. _Exhaustive, yet rewarding_.

Which is how she finds herself on the grounds under the cover of nightfall, watching the fruit of her labor as it blooms under the light of the moon. White petals splay wide open with trickles of golden yellow leaking out of the bud. It’s gorgeous in privacy and Jamie knows, without the shadow of a doubt, that it would still be beautiful even if she wasn’t here to witness it.

But god, she’s glad she is.

There’s tranquility in the cover of nightfall. Peace that Jamie has never known anywhere else. Even in the quiet still of the morning, Jamie can’t quite match this feeling. It feels as though she is the last living thing on the entire planet. Her and her moonflower, basking in the serenity they’ve been offered.

They are not so much interrupted as they are joined. A pair becomes a trio when Jamie catches sight of her apparition among the trees. She watches Jamie just as Jamie watches her. It’s familiar, reminiscent of ancient memories Jamie knows she doesn’t have. Memories of another life, another time. Something that never existed but maybe happened once upon a dream.

“Who are you?” Jamie asks. It’s a stab in the dark, a plea to an empty room. She braces herself for the inevitable, for her lady to fade away into the night. It’s happened so many times that Jamie comes to expect it. She sees it for what it is: a dance of their own. She can’t help but ask, though. Can’t help but take the chance at learning what she is desperate to know. 

Her lady does not run. She does not vanish into thin air as she is so apt to do. Instead, she stands with two feet firmly on the ground and stares straight into Jamie’s soul.

“I don’t know,” She says. Her voice sounds like an echo as it leaves her lips. Jamie has never heard anything quite like it, so distant yet so close at the same time. It should be a red flag that something isn’t right.

Too bad Jamie has a track record for ignoring the warning signs, for better or for worse. So, instead of saving her own skin, she asks, “Are you hurt? Or lost?”

For several moments, there’s nothing. Not a word, not a movement, not a single breath. Jamie feels her own heart rate kick up in her chest. A steady thrumming that changes to the speed of a hummingbird. Something feels off. This isn’t like the other times. There’s something different here, something _disconcerting_.

“It’s not safe,” The lady says, echo ringing out. The words themselves are alarming, but the implication sends something deep into the pit of Jamie’s stomach. It feels like a warning, and it is. Owen was right. It isn’t smart to feed beasts in the jungle unless you’re prepared to handle their attack.

“What’s not safe?” Jamie asks. She keeps her voice steady, willing herself to be a force to be reckoned with. Never before has she felt scared in the presence of her lady, not after that first time. Doubt still seeps its way in along the edges.

“You’re not safe.”

Jamie’s heart thrashes against her ribcage before sinking. “What am I not safe from?”

The lady watches on, pale face seemingly unchanging under the shifting clouds. She steps forward, a step Jamie neither matches nor retreats from, and answers, “Me.”

Maybe she’s stupid, maybe she’s stubborn, but Jamie does not run. She digs her heels into the dirt and balls her fists at her side. This woman, this _ghost_ , has been following her for months. She’s been dragging Jamie down little by little, luring her into whatever this is. If she was here to hurt her, if she was here to do some kind of damage, why hasn’t she done it?

“I’ve been watching you,” Jamie says. She doesn’t recognize her own voice. Somewhere below the bite of it, she is trembling. “You’ve been lurking around the property, standing down by that lake. I know you know I see you. I know you _want_ me to see you. So, if you’re so dangerous and I’m so unsafe, what’s the deal? Why haven’t you done your worst?”

The lady tilts her head so slowly Jamie thinks it’s going to fall right off her shoulders. She moves slow, too. Like molasses. It reminds Jamie of that first time in the greenhouse – of how the lady practically glided out.

It’s then that she knows. She’s surer of this than anything else in her life that the woman in front of her truly is a ghost. She knew before, had said it to herself multiple times, but now she _knows_.

She thinks of Owen. That fucker. He knew, too.

He tried to warn her.

“What happened to you?” Jamie asks when too much silence spreads out between them. This is the longest they’ve stood together, and despite the nerves that are creeping their way under Jamie’s skin, she’s not eager to let go.

She wants more.

She wants as much as her lady will give.

“I don’t remember,” Is the following answer. Her voice shifts from echoic to dreamy. A soft sigh that would be carried away by the wind if there were any. “I was living here, and then I was living there.”

Jamie follows to where the lady’s arm slowly lifts and points. Over to the still water of the lake.

“You live in there?” Jamie asks, and the lady nods. She feels like she’s sinking deeper into the mud, deeper into the gravity that’s been pulling at her since they met among the ivy and dirt.

_This is it_ , Jamie thinks. _I’ve really gone and fucked myself now._

The world tilts on its axis in one fluid motion and then goes black, black, black.

When Jamie wakes, the sun is high in the sky and the lady is gone.

She does not return. She is not in the woods, nor at the edge of the lake. She cannot be found behind corners or bushes or trees. It’s as though she’s purposefully tucked away, hidden out of sight so when Jamie looks for her she will not be found.

It stings, so she pours herself into her work. Watches her flowers climb out of the ground and into the sky. She tries to forget.

The garden, of all places, is where Jamie finds her next. Weeks later, almost months. Long enough that Jamie has stopped looking but not long enough for her to forget. Not long enough for her to give up entirely.

It’s exhausting, the way she carelessly trades early morning dewdrops to the fading glow of evening sunsets. It’s not every day. She can’t seem to bring herself to shift her schedule entirely, there’s too much to be done and nighttime isn’t always the best for gardening. But still, there are days she finds herself wandering the grounds long after the sun has gone down.

When Owen begins to ask questions, she tells him she needed a change of pace.

She tells herself the same thing, even though she knows it’s only a half-truth at best. Owen probably knows that, too, but it doesn’t matter.

In the garden, long after the manor has settled itself to sleep, Jamie finds herself with her wrists in the dirt. The light from the patio gives her enough space to work and the quiet of the evening lulls her into a trance. She sifts through soil, grabs the roots of weeds and pulls. Over and over again until she feels the dull ache of fatigue wearing into her biceps. _A late night tonight, an easy morning tomorrow_. That’s what she tells herself. The early bird gets the worm but the nocturnal gardener gets to sleep in.

She snorts. What in god’s name is becoming of her?

Time passes in an easy blur and soon she has a pile of weeds. Brambles and dandelions, thistles and docks. Sweat cools at the base of her neck when she sits back on her calves, back sore from crouching over in the low lamp light, avoiding her shadow and squinting for dark roots in even darker dirt. A night’s work well done.

For what, she doesn’t quite know. Not until she shifts, brushes her hands off on the denim of her pants.

That’s when she sees her, lingering in the edges of Jamie’s vision until she makes herself known.

The sight of her startles Jamie, sucks the air clean from her lungs and sends her heart hammering away in her chest. She has half a mind to be terrified, half a mind to be relieved.

The lady – _her_ lady – is back.

She feels different. There’s something about the way she stands, the way she _looks_. It’s unnamable in its newness, but Jamie feels it. Before, when they would catch eyes, she could feel herself being pushed away.

Now, she feels curiosity.

Now, she feels _pulled_.

If she’s being honest with herself, she’s always felt pulled to this stranger. But before, it was like there was something holding her back. An invisible force standing between the two of them, heavy and strange.

Whatever it was, it’s gone right now, and Jamie feels herself drifting closer and closer until they’re mere feet apart.

Closer now than they’ve ever been before, Jamie can see the rosebuds of her lips. They’re a full sort of soft pink that catch her attention for longer than they should. Everything about her seems to keep Jamie’s attention, from the quirk of her brows to the slope of her shoulders. There are days when her eyes seem clearer. Sometimes, they seem so clear Jamie swears they match in ways she’s never seen them match before. Perhaps it’s nothing but a trick of the shadows, but now is one of those times. Her right eye seems so bright that most of the hazel has faded away until all that’s left is crystal blue.

Distantly, Jamie wonders again if she’s cold. If the wet of her sweater sinks chills deep into her skin. She shivers thinking about it, how cold it must be in the water, colder still in the nighttime air.

She wonders if she would accept a jacket if offered, or a change of clothes.

Jamie gets halfway to shrugging off her flannel when she realizes how ridiculous she is. Whoever she is, _whatever_ she is, this lady has more than likely spent years dealing with the cold. Perhaps she doesn’t feel it anymore. Perhaps she doesn’t feel anything at all.

It’s impossible not to worry, as laughable as it sounds. Worrying about a ghost is maybe the most foolish thing Jamie has ever done and yet she doesn’t plan on stopping.

Instead of moving closer like she wants, they both stay in silence. Savoring the quiet fall of night and the company of another. The lady seems unhurried, for which Jamie is thankful. The closeness, the _slowness_ , of the night is something Jamie could keep with her long after the sun rises. If she could beg time to stop, she would.

Jamie makes herself comfortable in the soil of her garden bed. There is a patch of dirt that remains unplanted so there is no risk of harming her pride as she rests. The lady rests in her own way, standing on the cobble pathway and leaning against the hedges that line the garden gate.

Jamie’s own curiosity burns under the surface of her skin. She has questions she wants answered, theories she wants confirmed or denied. She has built stories up in her mind of this ghost, horrible things and pretty things all the same. She wonders if she’s close to the truth, even a little bit. Even if she never finds out for sure, she wants to know as much as possible. She _wonders_.

And just when she begins to find the words within herself, the silence breaks.

“Dani.”

Jamie’s head would have snapped up had she ever stopped looking at the lady. She does, however, startle.

“I’m sorry?”

“My name,” The lady says. Or, well, _Dani_ says.

_Dani_ , Jamie thinks, just to taste the weight of it out in her mind. It’s a pretty name. A fitting one. The roots of it are clear enough. Judgement, finality. All of it makes sense for the figure standing in front of it. Hovering between one world and the next.

“Jamie,” Is all she says in return, because if Dani is going to offer her name up then Jamie should do the same. It’s only fair.

Dani repeats it once and Jamie finds that she quite likes the sound of it coming from her. Her voice is rough around the edges, but soft as it stretches the long vowels out.

It’s all they say that night, but it feels like enough.

They become a habit, built into the very structure of her day.

She works in the daylight and her flowers grow. And in the night, she waits for her lady to arrive. They sit together at the edge of the lake and watch the fog roll out in thick waves. Sometimes, they sit there all night with not so much as a word passing between them. Other times, they become lost in slow conversation. Gentle questions and gentler answers.

Stories of a life marred by tragedy. Broken families and shattered expectations, Jamie tells her of how she took to London and how London took her for granted. Every piece of the story is woven together with delicate thread. She narrates her life until there is nothing left to tell and then some. She shares silly things from her favorite color to what books she wants to read next year. And in between all the details of Jamie’s life, Dani finds her own story. 

There isn’t much of a story to tell, other than an ending and beginning that meld into the same moment. The end of Dani’s old life and the beginning of her new one. A groundskeeper, a guardian, a ghost that’s been left behind in the wake of someone else’s grief. Someone with whom she shares a body.

Fused with the soul of another, muddled up and left out to dry, she roams the grounds. 

There are times when Dani isn’t quite Dani. She’s not the same ghost who whispers hushed secrets into the nighttime air. Instead, she’s something else. Something distant and haunting. Those are the moments where Jamie feels unsettled, as though she needs to keep her guard a little higher. She hesitates to use the word _spooky_ or _creepy_ , but it’s in those moments where Jamie feels as though this whole thing is a riskier gambit than she lets herself believe.

It’s hard to explain the change, especially when she’s almost exactly the same. Same face, same skin. She’s different, though. Unmistakably so. The hazel of her right eye returns and she drifts effortlessly through the manor. Unconsciously.

As time goes by, though, Dani becomes just Dani.

The changes come less and less until all that’s left is a simple girl with a simple afterlife. One where she sleeps, wakes, and wanders. She comes to Jamie’s side until the lake calls her home.

“I couldn’t remember anything,” She says one night, voice dancing with the fog that spreads out across the lake. Midnight dewdrops sink into the seat of Jamie’s overalls but pays it no mind, only hums in acknowledgement. Dani’s fickle memory of _before_ has come up several times for several different reasons. “And then I met you.”

Jamie’s attention drifts from the rolling mist to where Dani sits beside her. She stares out, a distant expression reminiscent to the very first time they met. “I could feel myself slipping away and it was impossible to hold on. It was just me and her, her and me. I don’t even know when I lost myself.”

A pause, a beat of silence, and Jamie feels something swell inside of her. Something bigger than herself, bigger than both of them. She doesn’t even realize when her hand passes through the grass until she’s already done it.

Dani is surprisingly solid. Her skin is as icy cold as Jamie imagined it would be, but there’s something humming beneath the surface. Jamie swipes her thumb over the back of her hand and realizes that for every edge of Dani that’s unfamiliar, there are plains that feel like home.

The chill of it burns Jamie’s palms, makes her entire body shiver, but she doesn’t let go. She won’t let go. Now that she has her in her hands for the first time, she’s not ready to part so soon.

Neither is Dani, because she makes no move to let go. Instead, Jamie feels her hand grip tighter, feels the press of her fingers between her knuckles. It’s almost as though she’s grounding herself in Jamie’s touch, in her warmth. Drinking it in and savoring every last drop of it.

Jamie is more than happy to give, to sacrifice. She would offer all of her warmth, her entire _body_ , if she knew it would ease the ache that tumbles through Dani.

“And then I met you,” Dani continues, “and I started to remember. Little pieces. Not the whole thing, but it’s enough to feel like me again. Or, at least what’s left of me.”

There is peace in the way the damp grass yields to them.

“I’m so glad you stayed,” Dani whispers, the thick of it stuck in her throat but Jamie hears her. Understands the heavy-weighted meaning behind her words.

_I’m glad you didn’t run. I’m glad you didn’t hide. I’m glad you sought me out, because even though I disappear, you always come back to me._

It’s in that single moment that everything boils over. Whatever was simmering between them dilates, then _snaps._ Jamie moves without thinking, crowds into what space is left between them and feels, for the first time in a long time, _alive_.

Dani meets her in her eagerness, lips cool to the touch. She tastes like water and earth and it’s everything Jamie has ever known to be true in life. It’s everything she’s ever dedicated herself to.

Devotion is a tricky thing, but it’s the only word that comes to mind when she thinks of Dani. She does not want to keep her all to herself; she does not want to own her and flaunt her around like a pretty centerpiece at a fancy party. She wants Dani in the simplest of terms. To be with her, to talk with her, to laugh with her. To _share_ with her, in any way that looks like.

Love, perhaps, is akin to the feeling that glows inside of her. Love. _Devotion._

_“Jamie,”_ Dani pleads, breaking the kiss. Her voice ghosts over the apple of Jamie’s cheek and she shudders at the feeling of it. Her eyes sit red around the rims and sunken in. She looks desolate. “I’m dead.”

“I know,” Jamie says, because she does. She does know this. There is no doubt in her mind that Dani is dead and has been for a long time. She’s been dead long before Jamie arrived and she’ll be dead long after. “I don’t care.”

Dani looks at her like waves crashing against a shoreline – violent in her grief but hopeful underneath the wash of ocean salt. Jamie holds her ground, though. She doesn’t care. She _doesn’t_. It’s not like she’s ever liked people, anyway. What does Dani expect her to do? Run off and find some jolly old bloke to spend the rest of her life with? Travel the world and meet curious strangers to exhaust herself into?

No. None of that sounds appealing to her. She wants simple. She wants boring. Her life since getting here, though strange, is the best it’s ever been. There’s peace on the grounds of Bly Manor; simplicity in her daily routine. She wakes up, she tends to her garden, she sits with Dani. She couldn’t ask for more. She doesn’t want more.

She wants _Dani_.

In whatever way she’s allowed to have her, she’ll take it. This is good enough for her. She’s not expecting a home together, nor kids. Life and love are not constructs that can be confined to one single definition. Jamie doesn’t want all that, anyway. She wants the life she has made for herself here. The one where Dani lingers in the greenhouse, the one where she sits at the lake. She wants early mornings and late nights. She wants cold kisses and colder hands.

Jamie kisses her again. Because she wants to – _because she can_ – and thank god Dani kisses her back.

“I want this,” she whispers. “Whatever this is, I want it.”

“You have an entire life to live,” comes out of Dani’s lips sleep to the freezing. Wanting and desperate all at the same time. “I will not take you.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Jamie reasons. “There’s nowhere else I want to be. This place – _you_ – I couldn’t want for more. I’ll stay here, I’ll keep gardening. But I still want you. I want you to stay, too.”

Dani and her soaked through sweater and her hazel-blue eyes stares at her like she put the moon in the sky, kisses her like she’ll breathe life into her broken lungs.

They build their own kind of home, side by side. Their own kind of life. It comes to them effortlessly until happiness is all they truly know. And they stay like that, dancing their dance and having their years. A gardener and her ghost, tangled together until Jamie becomes the flowers in which she consecrated her life to. Until the end of their days and then long after. Until there’s nothing more.

And in their place, a leafling grows.

**Author's Note:**

> God I really haven’t stopped thinking about these two for an entire week.
> 
> I got the idea for this fic where all my best ideas happen: in the shower. I had my Hozier playlist going and It Will Come Back came on and bam, I was lost in this world. I’d always wondered what would have happened in Jamie saw Dani again after the finale, but we all know that doesn’t happen. And then, I wondered, what would happen if Jamie met Dani long after the incident even takes place. As I was writing, I realized there are multiple Hozier songs that really play into this fic: As It Was, It Will Come Back, Work Song, Like Real People Do, and In A Week. All of them absolutely slap and all of them have killer Damie vibes (99% of Hozier songs have Damie vibes. He’s just a Damie kind of dude). 
> 
> Anyway. 
> 
> Some of the lore and other details I’ve written into it:  
> -Dani still gets taken by the Lady. She still invites Viola into herself and perishes at her ghostly hands. Did she do it saving Flora? Sure. Why not. I really didn’t think through the how of it, but the end result is the same. Dani is the lady of the lake.  
> -Dani has been dead for 10ish years now. It’s ambitious in the beginning bc I like the way I wrote it and didn’t feel like specifying anything in the actual fic  
> -Hannah is dead I’m so sorry  
> -Owen knows about Dani. He doesn’t know she’s still Dani though. Jamie never tells him the full truth.  
> -Because she is not 100% Viola, she does not walk the same path Viola walked. Instead, she wanders anywhere she wants. There’s no preordained destination, nothing she’s looking for. She just wanders around.  
> -The longer Dani and Viola share a body, the more Dani begins to lose herself. After so many years of being intertwined it’s hard to parse through who is who. Her memory fades  
> -When Viola has more control, Dani’s eyes are distinctly different. When Dani has more control, her eyes appear almost the same color. Never exactly the same, but almost.  
> -Jamie pulls Dani out of the shadows. I took Jamie’s original introduction from the show and how Dani felt like she already knew her and ran with it. Those same vibes linger throughout the fic. Dani and Jamie, unexplainable drawn together. 
> 
> I hope you guys liked it! I really fucking love these two and I had so much fun creating this world. It was really interesting to explore Jamie’s character and how the two of them would interact in a world like this. I may or may not continue to write for them, I haven’t made up my mind. I didn’t even plan on writing this. It was more of an accidental 3 day brain rot writing session.
> 
> HUGE thank you to [tinyarmedtrex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyarmedtrex) for always being a true ride or die and beta’ing things for fandoms she isn’t even in. You’re the best and I adore you. 
> 
> Come chat with me on [Tumblr](http://thelazyeye.tumblr.com/) and on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thelazyeye24)! And please, if you’re so inclined, please please please drop a comment and let me know what you thought! I literally live for feedback and validation. I will shrivel up and die without it.


End file.
